Month: March 2013

Quick update – my family is up for a visit, starting today, for just over a week so I may neglect my blog (as well as reading others…) for the next week. Try not to miss me too much ;p I am *super* excited to see my family though! I haven’t seen my mom, sister and niece since Christmas and this will be there first visit to Northern California from Ontario, Canada since I moved here. I have the funnest things planned for them in hopes they keep coming back to visit.

In other news, the Healthy Challenge I’m participating in is going well. I’ve had a couple of days of a bit of overeating, but completely back on track now. Yesterday was an especially great day where I feel pretty good about what I ate. It was also my one completely raw day for the week. I enjoy incorporating raw foods into my diet every day of course, but it’s fun to challenge myself to a full day of rawsome meals.

I had errands to run trying to get prepared for the visit from my family, but I did stop and take a few minutes to enjoy the scenery:

I really wanted to try and do a long run today so I had my larabar:

I managed to get a 10km run in =D I was very proud of myself as this is the longest run I’ve done since I sprained my ankle in the fall. It was a long recovery process, but I’m happy to be back in the game and excited to train for an upcoming half marathon in September. It took me 1 hour and 9 minutes, I used to be able to run it in about an hour , sometimes less… but for now I’m looking forward to just getting the miles in, then I’ll work on speed.

After that long run, I needed to refuel:

And I made a super tasty dinner:

As I started layering, I realised you guys wouldn’t see everything, so here it is part way into the layers (you can’t see really, but I used heirloom cherry tomatoes and they were so pretty!). And here is a shot of the final product:

I have felt compelled to cheat… and to be honest, the first day of the challenge was a no-go for me. I ended up eating more junk than I normally do. I had a weird and off day. But I woke up the next day feeling determined to stick with it and have been managing pretty well so far.

So what do you do when you’re supposed to go to bootcamp and you’d rather stay home and eat pizza? I had a difficult decision to make, I was tired, didn’t think I was really up to bootcamp as I hadn’t really been enjoying the new one I was trying out and pizza sounded so much better! I hauled my butt to bootcamp, actually had fun and came home and made this instead:

This dish is actually inspired by Carrie as I had never tried making water-sautéed veggies before. I thought you *needed* oil to make a stir fry. Well, at least to make it taste good. But this is not true! I started off with some fresh ginger, garlic & onion, added mushrooms and broccoli, purple cabbage and red pepper and topped it with cilantro and sesame seeds. It took all of 15 minutes and tasted amazing! I did add a tiny bit of coconut aminos and some cayenne pepper for flavour – but hardly any at all. And I felt sooooo much better that I had this instead of pizza (even though my pizza is fairly healthy with a rice tortilla, 1 tbsp of pasta sauce, some fresh veggies and a bit of daiya). And taking a simple step like this helped keep me on track the rest of the week.

I’d like to share my goals with you (am most likely doing this for 4-6 weeks instead of 6-8):

1) No potato chips (I eat these way too much right now!)

2) No evening snacks (fruit is an exception)

3) Exercise at least 1 hour per day, with Sundays off (I am setting this goal as I’m looking to lose weight)

4) One day of completely raw food per week (I used to do this, but haven’t really since I’ve moved and would love to get back in the habit)

7) No overeating & minimise emotional eating (sometimes I do this when I’m stressed or upset)

8) Minimizing the use of oils and sweeteners

9) Decrease fruit intake, increase veggie intake

10) Drinking lots and lots of water (I already do this, but have days where I get busy and don’t drink as much as I should and then eat more to compensate)

I tried making these goals attainable. I find sometimes I set myself up for failure as I make rules instead of goals and they seem to strict and I end up doing the opposite of what I have set out for myself. Also, I’m allowing myself some exceptions. I’ve been enjoying treats & sweets a little too much lately, so I’m allowing myself one slightly indulgent day per week (where I make a fun and healthy dessert made out of fruit and/or dates and nuts & seeds) and one moderately indulgent day per week where I can have an evening snack and have some chips. If I pre-meditate the day (usually a Friday or a Saturday), I can look forward to it and try to stay on track in the meantime.

That being said, my mom, sister & niece are coming up to visit this coming Wednesday for a week and a half… so I may not be sticking to this quite as well as I’d like, but I am making preparations to ensure I do. I have grawnola in the dehydrator as we speak and kale chips and flax crackers are next. I am making some salad ahead of time and putting it in lunch-size containers so I can have it on the go and will be chopping up some carrots & veggies so everyone can snack on them instead of caving into chips. They enjoy chips and seem to have more self-control with them than I do, so I am faced with having chips in the house, but I think I will have non-vegan ones as I know this will keep me from eating them.

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!! I may not post quite as much this week with the family up, but I’ll have some fun pictures to share =)

I love it when I make dinner and I’m absentmindedly throwing it together, thinking of something altogether different… something other than food at all, and then I sit down to take my first bite and am shocked by how good it tastes. And while I slowly eat and savour my delicious food, I try to remember how to recreate the magic and come up kind of stuck. Well, I shall try to remember exactly how to make this dish because the flavours melded perfectly. Mmmm.

Chickpea Coconut Curry (serves 2 and leaves leftovers for a couple of lunches)

1/2 cup brown rice, cooked in 1 and 1/4 cups of water for approx 20-25 minutes

1 tbsp coconut oil

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 tbsp of ginger, minced

1/4 of a small, red onion, diced

2 medium carrots, peeled & sliced into rounds

1 generous handful of mushrooms, sliced

1/4 head of cauliflower, cut into bite-size pieces

3/4 cup of peas (I had frozen, fresh is preferable)

2 tbsp of curry powder

1 tsp of cumin

1 tsp of coriander

1/2 tsp of sea salt

1/2 cup of coconut milk

1.5 cups chickpeas (I pre-cook and freeze the dried kind, you could just use 1 can)

Cook the rice and while it is cooking, start chopping all of your veggies.

Heat a wok on medium heat for about a minute and the coconut oil. Sauté the garlic, ginger & onion for a minute or so and add the carrot and continue to sauté for a few minutes until the carrot starts to soften. Add the mushrooms for another minute, then add in the cauliflower and stirfry for a few minutes. Add the peas, all of the spices, the coconut milk and chickpea flour and the chard and let it simmer for about 5-7 minutes until the coconut milk looks nice and thick. Stir in the tomato, the cilantro and coconut shreds. Remove the wok from heat and squeeze your lime half over and mix it in. Serve it over your rice.

It only took me 40 minutes from the time I started cooking the rice to the time I was plating – nice, quick meal.

I have linked up with these super fun blogging parties! Check them out for some awesome recipes =)

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I'm Kimmy, a holistic nutritionist on the path to healthy living and loving myself. I want to share my passion for kale and chocolate with you. I focus on allergy-friendly recipes and you will find some appetizing healthy eats as well as some delicious indulgences here. ♥